Peripheral devices can be coupled to computers. Application programs running on computers normally control the peripheral devices through device drivers, and a different specific device driver is used for each different kind of peripheral device. The device drivers typically are specific to the device type, the processor and operating system (platform) on which the device driver is running, and sometimes even to the type of data that the platform generates.
Each device driver serves as an interface for an operating system or application program to communicate with a peripheral device. Device drivers generally are hardware-dependent and each device driver is designed for a particular type of peripheral device hardware such as a printer, scanner, video adapter, network interface card, sound card, digital camera, etc.
For printer devices, device drivers are termed printer drivers and interact with application programs that generate a graphics object, which is data that can be printed on paper. A printer driver also controls printer device hardware features and settings, such as output paper tray and paper size. The printer driver converts requests issued from an application program into a printer-specific control language termed PDL (Page Description Language) such as PostScript, PCL, PJL, etc. Data communicated between a printer driver and printer hardware includes both printable data and hardware control commands mixed together in a PDL data stream.
Some high-end printer devices, especially those used in commercial or large-scale production printing environments, support job ticket-based printer control using commands expressed in Job Definition Format (JDF). JDF allows a printer driver to submit to the printer job ticket-based printer control commands in one data stream, and printable data in a second data stream that is sent to the printer at a separate time. In this approach, control commands and printable data are not mixed.
In a typical approach, to set up job-related settings for a particular job relating to a particular peripheral device, an application invokes the device driver and displays a static user interface through which the user can select various parameter values or other job settings. The driver interprets the selections and transforms the selections into a set of job setting data. The driver sends the job setting data to the device, either bundled with substantive job data or separately using a data structure or message termed a “job ticket.”
Development of conventional device drivers is complex. A device manufacturer normally is required to devote substantial resources to develop a wide array of drivers to account for every permutation of devices made by the manufacturer and target computer platforms. Further, the user interface provided by a device driver is normally static and fixed, so that if the device is upgraded with a new feature, the manufacturer also must update the driver to present the new feature in an updated user interface. Thus, conventional device drivers usually comprise a distinct driver for each device type.
A related problem involves drivers that do not support vendor extensions. A Universal Serial Bus (USB) flash memory storage device is an example of a peripheral storage device that suffers from limitations associated with conventional device drivers. In current MICROSOFT WINDOWS environments, a typical USB storage device or “memory stick” does not require a user to install new software to read or write to the device, because each of MICROSOFT WINDOWS XP and MICROSOFT WINDOWS VISTA includes a standard USB storage device driver. While this is convenient, manufacturers of competing USB storage devices are required to conform to the standard features that are supported in the WINDOWS device driver. Manufacturer-specific features are not possible, and different manufacturers can only compete in the marketplace on the basis of price and form factor, not internal technical features.
Microsoft Corporation has introduced a document format termed XML Paper Specification (XPS) that includes a job ticket format termed PrintSchema for the purpose of controlling printer hardware.
Device drivers for scanner devices, termed scanner drivers, interact with application programs for retrieving a scanned image. Data communicated between the scanner driver and the scanner device includes scanned image data and scanner device-specific control commands. The image data and scanner control commands can be mixed together in a format such as TWAIN.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.